Saab reliability. Factory reliability. Road racing is hard on engines and so I decided to take a card from the Saab 'conservative first, peak performance second' approach. An original factory rating of 225hp and 252 ft*lb of torque is plenty enough to get up to speed and/or into trouble. I refreshed the long block while keeping it stock, deciding to focus investments into some light intake upgrades, the full package of exhaust upgrades, and cooling upgrades. And a new Sachs Viggen clutch package. And a lower mileage TD04 turbocharger. And new serpentine accessories. And all new transmission seals. And, yeah, parts.
Removal of the passenger cabin heater core required tapping and plugging the water pump return and tapping the cylinder heat exit for the water temperature gauge.
A Bando 6PK1815 takes care of the serpentine after removal of the A/C compressor.
I was initially somewhat concerned about road racing with turbocharged power for fears of massive engine temperatures and/or failures, but then again, the teams in Trollhättan and Södertälje pretty much brought turbocharging to passenger cars and after 40+ years, I am hedging on the fact that the Saab tune and Trionic T7 combustion management system will keep the engine safe. But a massive Do88 intercooler also seemed like a good idea.
My dad lent a helping hand to get the B235R back onto the GenuineSaab (thanks Nick for making one more/last rear race mount!) race polyurethane mounts. This work required a solid few hours as it was my first time simultaneously lining up both a transmission input shaft and the transmission intermediate output shaft. It is clear that the factory WIS method of pre-assembling the engine, transmission, and sub frame and then lifting the power train up into the car is the factory method for a good reason.
Fingers crossed the ~100,000 mi engine pulls us around the track for a good while!
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